17. Parliamentary committees

There are 20 standing committees (and four sub-committees) in the EP, each covering a different policy area. They draw up reports for consideration in the plenary – on both legislative and non-legislative matters – and seek to hold the executive to account. The seats on each committee, and their chairs, are normally distributed among the Parliament’s political groups in proportion to the number of seats they hold in the Parliament as a whole.
The chart below lists the committees of the EP, ordered by the number of MEPs who sit on them. It also shows the chairs, elected by the members of each committee, together with their political group and nationality. The chairs formally meet together in the Conference of Committee Chairs, and have elected Bernd Lange, Chair of the International Trade (INTA) Committee, as their chair for the second half of the current parliamentary term.